


Class Pass

by Greenisher



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 05:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16737850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenisher/pseuds/Greenisher
Summary: Sam buys Steve a class pass. Steve tries out some martial arts he didn't have in the 1940s.





	Class Pass

**Author's Note:**

> Using a mixture of comics canon and uh, a couple of movies. I wanted to put together an explanation as to where Steve would learn a buncha martial arts he shows expertise in in the movies when most of them came to the USA after he froze. 
> 
> (I know in the comics the government gets him a bunch of experts but I like this ok)

“So what does it do, exactly?” Steve asks over pancakes and coffee.

 

“C'mon, ice poppy,” Sam's new nickname for him, a nickname Steve thinks may have been brainstormed with Nat. “It's like a coupon.”

 

“Old people love coupons,” Nat adds.

 

“It lets you join a bunch of fitness classes.”

 

“I don't need fitness classes,” Steve says, frowning down at his huge, super serum created arms. Sam patted his bicep. 

 

“Nah man, I'm not talking bout keeping fit. They include a bunch of martial arts classes.”

 

Steve stares at the phone screen Sam is holding out to him and then takes the phone in both hands, the way he does whenever Sam shows him anything on his phone. Sam rolls his eyes. He's got an auntie a little younger than Steve who does the same thing. “Like the thing you showed me on the TV? MNA?”

 

“MMA,” Nat says, smirking as she steals a pancake from Steve's plate. She loves ‘teach the iceman about modern society’ brunches with Sam and Steve.

 

“What's this one? Capoeira?”

 

“Of course you went for the one with Cap in it,” Nat says. “That's a good one. Really unpredictable.”

 

“There's a class on tonight,” Steve says, scrolling as he reads the info. “And we can book it on your phone?” He holds the phone back out to Sam, and Sam and Nat share a little look.

 

“I'm booking it, ice pops,” Sam says with a laugh in his voice.

 

* * *

  
  


“You're flexible,” the capoeira teacher says. “And I can't knock you over. But you don't got any rhythm, man.”

 

Steve isn't even out of breath, but he puts his hands on his hips, scrunching his mouth into a line. “No rhythm?” 

 

He remembers practicing dances in his room, dreaming of Peggy. He still misses the ghost of her body dancing with his.

 

“Yeah, no rhythm.” The instructor looks over his head. “Hey Parker! You gotta start coming more regular, man! You spending too much time at that internship!” Back to Steve, he frowns. “You got so much power and stability. And yeah, you can dodge and weave, what's that from, boxing?”

 

Steve nods, remembering classes in his youth with Bucky, struggling to keep up as asthma pressed on his lungs. Light flyweight to Bucky's welterweight. “Useta box. With my buddy.”

 

“You got good legs, though. No homo.”

 

“None taken,” Steve says, his face a question mark. 

 

“You thought about practicing something more traditional?”

 

Steve thinks deeply, tries to bring up a more traditional martial art. They'd done boxing as kids. He and Bucky had used to watch wrestling and memorise the moves. They'd spent a lotta time with the French resistance, couple of guys who'd used savate. He thinks back, and the 40s are as clear as yesterday. He kicks out, one of the high side kicks he'd learned from them. “Like this?”

 

“Oh sure, nice form. That from karate or taekwondo?” 

 

Steve had heard of these from the TV shows Sam had him watching. He grasped at straws, “Uh, Taekwondo, I think.”

 

“There's a real good school round the corner,” the instructor was saying. “Teach you pretty good, I do some crosstraining there. Parker, how'd you get up there?” He's turned to Peter, one of his promising students who's flying kick has somehow landed him on top of a group of chairs at the back of the hall. When he turns around, the big muscle dude is gone.

 

* * *

  
  


“Hey, I couldn't find you on the, uh, class pass, but you were on Google maps,” Steve says at the dojo. “Do you have a beginners class?”

 

“We do, yeah,” says the young instructor assistant.

 

“Hey, Steve,” says a man with a busted up face and a black belt near the back of the class. 

 

“Hey-- Clint?” 

 

“Yeah, it's me.”

 

“You do this?”

 

“Yeah,” Clint is going through slow, painful looking stretches. “Sometimes you gotta go toe-to-toe. I take sword classes, nunchucks and a couple other things.”

 

“How long?”

 

“Since I was a kid. I had private lessons too, if you wanna call it that,” he raises his eyebrows as he rubs his head, hand by his hearing aid. “I remember coming to this dojo once when we came through town and knocking out this one little rich kid. Rand, I think? Sammy Rand?”

 

The instructor assistant was calling them to attention. “Good luck, Steve,” Clint says over his shoulder.

 

* * *

  
  


“Your kicks are real good,” Clint says, watching. “But you're a little bit slow.”

 

Steve nods, and does his roundhouse kick again. 

 

“Still kinda slow.”

 

“He's going real fast for a beginner,” the instructor assistant says with some alarm.

 

“Yeah, but it's not as fast as he can go. I know the guy.” 

 

Steve keeps up the kicking. 

 

“That's really fucking fast,” the instructor assistant says, real horror in his voice as Steve kicks right through the sandbag they’ve set up. 

 

“Pretty good,” Clint says with a grin. “Where'd you learn that from? Savate?”

 

Steve grins back, a little out of breath, shin in warm pleasant pain. “You got me there.”

 

“Wanna see something?” Clint takes a few steps back, and then executes a flip kick. Steve nods and then attempts it. He lands on the ball of his foot and hops, blue eyes sparkling. He's excited. “Try this next,” Clint says and executes a perfect scissor kick. 

 

Steve memorises it, eyes wide, a slow smile spreading over his usually serious face.

 

“That's kinda advanced,” the instructor assistant says. “We don't teach a bunch of kicks at once. Like Bruce Lee says! Don't fear the man who learns ten thousand kicks, fear the man who learned one kick ten thousand times!”

 

Steve looks like a lightbulb has gone off over his head. Clint pats his bicep. “There's a Friday class,” he says, as he walks back to the changing rooms.

 

* * *

  
  


As Clint figured he would be, Steve is there at the Friday class. He looks exactly the same, but he's got a big grin on his face, like a man who's figured out the secrets of the universe. Clint and the instructor assistant approach him and Steve says, “Hey, Barton!”

 

What happens next is a mock attack as Steve runs at Clint and turns in the air, bringing his heel down on him. Clint rolls out the way, picking up a kickpad as he comes up. “Next one!”

 

Steve leaps into a scissor kick, his foot landing perfectly in line with Clint's throat. 

 

“What the actual fuck,” the instructor assistant says.

 

Steve places his hands on his hips. “You said it. Practice the kick ten thousand times. So I did.”

 

“In a  _ week _ ?”

 

Clint pats his arm. “Told you he can go fast. Hey, Steve, what's next?”

 

* * *

  
  


Steve tries some sword stuff with someone Clint knows through kenjutsu classes, Colleen Wing, but he finds working with a shield much more to his liking. He watches Jessica Jones slam a full grown man through a wall professional wrestler style and is stopped from helping by a gentleman named Luke Cage who knows the kinda classic street brawling he and Bucky had known way back when. Kali classes are easier, all about parrying which is second-nature to a guy who fights with a shield, though a blind guy in his class manages to disarm him. Afterwards, from a roof he watches a man in a devil costume leap through the air and makes a note to sign back up to gymnastics classes. He tries them on class pass. They go better than the judo class he tries, where he is too upset at the idea of harming a civilian to really work out. He thinks about trying professional wrestling, but thinks the better of it after watching a match where a young wrestler in a red, blue and black calling himself spider-something crawls up the side of the cage.

 

Nat is eating his cereal when he gets in. Steve doesn't really eat cereal. He keeps it in his kitchen because Nat likes to break into his apartment and eat it. 

 

“Did you have a good class pass trial, fossil?”

 

“Hey Nat. You plannin’ on waiting til I sleep and then dropping me off in the museum again?”

 

“Nah, you're too heavy to play that prank more than once. Clint said you were great at taekwondo.”

 

“Reminded me of savate,” Steve pours himself his own bowl of cereal, checking the label. He'd thrown it into his cart in the store without even looking. It was Captain Caveman. That felt ironic.

 

“You know, I'm a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu,” Nat says, conversationally.

 

“Oh yeah, is that so?” Steve smiles at her.

 

“Fury's a brown belt. Sometimes I give him private classes.”

 

“You're kidding.”

 

“Nope,” Nat throws him a white belt and he catches it with one hand, eyes sparkling with excitement and interest. “You coming to class, padawan?”

 

“You couldn't keep me away.”

 

“And if you suck we'll throw you back in the freezer for another sixty years,” Nat says, with that smile that seems to suggest she's not joking. 

 

“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” Steve says. 

 

Nat waits til Steve has a mouthful of cereal before she adds, “make sure you're not too tired from getting banged by Wilson first.”

 

No matter what Steve learns, he's never going to learn how to defend against Nat’s ability to make him snort milk through his nose in shock.


End file.
